Startup Spotlight Showcase 2018

This year’s Startup Showcase spotlight at A3C featured three startups that focused on helping bridge the gap between music and technology. Each of the three startups focused on helping artists in some capacity in their own unique way. This year’s spotlight had three judges: Ryan Wilson, CEO & co-founder of The Gathering Spot, Paul Judge, partner and co-founder of Tech Square Labs, and Coach K, co-founder of Quality Control Records. Each judge had the opportunity to listen to the startups and offer their advice and critiques to the new companies.

Now for the startups.

The first startup is The Labz. The Labz is a centralized collaboration platform that automates the ownership protection process for creators. They offer a secure, creative, workspace that assigns value to each contributor’s contributions. They also generate contracts and help publish these documents for the public. They make this process a lot easier for artists by combining documentation and collaboration. They didn’t just make this platform for artists solely, photographers, videographers, visual artsts, and authors also can use this product to their benefit.

photo by DV Photo & Video

The second startup is Amuse. Amuse is best defined by the CEO as ‘what a record label would look like today.’ They startup is based on addressing the problems a lot of new and emerging artists face. They offer the artist free distribution under the guise “Come for the free distribution but stay for the label.” Yes Amuse is also a label, but that’s secondary to them. They give the opportunity to get distribution of their music and analytics on their music’s performance from streaming companies for free. If they see an artists they think could be successful, they offer that artist a licensing deal with the opportunity for Amuse to help push their music.

photo by DV Photo & Video

The final startup that was highlighted was SongLink. SongLink solves the hard problem of music sharing. It aggregates their music from all music streaming services in one easy place. They provide custom URLs, provides analytics, and even offers custom graphics for anything the artist might need. SongLink also makes it easier for the artist to connect with their fans by creating a dynamic web that leads to more interactions between them. SongLink allows fans to share their favorite songs with other people regardless of the streaming platform, which benefits and increases the artists’ reach.